During any close relationship with a person, you will naturally witness their triumphs and
struggles, and you will see how all these experiences carve evidence of their existence into
them. Sometimes what you see are all the ridges created by periods of pain and uncertainty,
and sometimes these experiences are difficult to verbalize because bringing one’s wounds
into the light for people to see can feel terrifying. If vulnerability is this difficult on a good
day, imagine climbing over the walls of toxic masculinity to say to someone “I’m not okay, I
need help”.
I think about the men in my life that I love dearly (and the little men who will one day
become big men), and I cannot help feeling relieved that the conversation about men’s
mental health has become louder and more widespread. At the same time, there is this
sense of urgency I feel when I look at the burden of ‘strength’ and ‘invulnerability’ that my
partner carries or all the problematic ideas about what it means to be a man that toxic
masculinity will weave into my beautiful little nephew’s sense of self.
Here is what we know: the World Health Organization reported in 2021 that an estimated
5% of adults suffer from depression worldwide, that depression diagnoses are more
common among women, yet men have a 3 to 5 times higher rate of suicide than women.
These statistics suggest that mental illness is severely under-reported among men, which is
frightening. There is clearly pain and struggle among our men, but shame associated with
the idea of being perceived to be weak neutralizes help-seeking in the most profound way.
I am speaking to the men right now: where do you feel safe enough to fall apart? When
was the last time you allowed yourself to be held?
I could go on for pages and pages about all the harmful messages that pervasive ideas about
masculinity sew into the fabric of a man’s identity but that is a very long conversation that
needs a very large cup of coffee. I want to focus on what some of these toxic messages
teach our men about how to relate to their own emotions.
Have you watched Dr Brene Brown’s TED talks on the power of vulnerability and listening to
shame? If you have yet to watch them, I urge you to run like the wind to your nearest device
and find them. Dr Brown speaks about how vulnerability and shame are bound – we are
reluctant to share our stories wholeheartedly because we fear that this openness will be
perceived as weakness, which will ultimately lead to rejection and disconnection. Toxic
notions of what it means to be a masculine man amplify this exact fear exponentially
because (supposedly) the greatest shame a man can carry is that of being vulnerable to that
which makes us all vulnerable – risking for love, fear, uncertainty, loss, failure, illness,
exhaustion, self-doubt, and everything else that is an inevitable part of being human.
How does one dare to be vulnerable enough to ask for help when their identity is built upon
the invulnerability of toxic masculinity? Surely, to do so would be to undo yourself and risk
rejection by those who witness this undoing.

One of the important prognostic factors we consider when treating mental illness is the
quality of one’s support system: a good support system contributes to a positive prognosis
and an absent or ineffective support system tends to contribute to a negative prognosis.
Our ability to make use of our support system even when it is there is something else
altogether – accessing our support systems also hinges on our perception of their availability
and willingness to love us unconditionally in our moment of turmoil. This leaves our men in
a pickle: needing their loved ones as an important part of their healing while the voice of
toxic masculinity threatens them with the torturous image of being seen as a failure by the
very people they desperately need. The fear of being abandoned or rejected by those who
love us is often so great a barrier that we cannot reach the helping hand that has been
stretched out to us.
So where does this leave us? I do not think I even know where this leaves us… where this
leaves you as a man who is reading this and wanting desperately to tell someone that you
feel like you cannot breathe. This place feels stuck and impossible to navigate.
Perhaps it is an undoing that is needed – an undoing of everything we have been taught
about what masculinity accepts and does not accept. What I have come to know is that
living a life of invulnerability is dangerous to us and deprives us of true connection –
connection to others and fundamentally, connection to oneself.
What I know with unwavering certainty is that I do not want to see another generation of
boys who become men who never feel safe enough to say, “I’m not okay. I need help”.